LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
The Gospel According to Marc: |
by Marc Acito |
Best Tressed: Is Your Hair Naturally Gay? I didn't know I had curly hair until I was 14. It may sound strange to be unaware of something so elemental about yourself; it's like not noticing you were circumcised or had a club foot. But back in 1980, the New Jersey standard was Deney Terrio of Dance Fever, so I regularly tortured my hair into submission by setting the blow dryer to "G-force." All that changed on a humid spring break in Florida where my hair just curled up and dried. The discovery that I was actually a mop top came as a complete revelation to me. Shortly thereafter I also realized I was gay. Coincidence? I think not. I turned in my blow dryer, and I've been "kinky" ever since. Hair is an integral part of our identity. If you don't think so, let us recall the story of Rosie's Locks and the Three Hair-Dos. When The Rosie O'Donnell Show first aired, it was obvious the network brass wanted to fem our girl up; her hair was so frosted and fussy she looked like Kathie Lee Gifford retaining water. With the show's runaway success, however, she returned to her Really Rosie color and a low-maintenance (but still long-haired) bob. Then, of course, there was The Coming Out Haircut, the one that looked like she leapt out of the chair before the stylist was finished. Suddenly the Queen of Nice had become a Royal Butch. It could have been worse. She could have worn a mullet. Now in defense of this much despised style, back in its heyday (when it was poofy or spiky on top), being a member of the Mulletia meant you were hip, cool and, in all likelihood, queer. I myself can be seen wearing one for all eternity in my 1984 high school yearbook, along with a tie narrower than Rick Santorum's mind. I look like the secret love child of Daryl Hall and John Oates. But gradually mullets evolved into the "business in front, party in back" style favored by people who spend weekends working on their Harleys before piling the kids in the pick-up to go tractor-shopping at the county fair. I'm speaking, of course, of rednecks and lesbians. How these two Mutual Aggravation Societies came to share a hairdo I'll never know, but reminding your lesbian sisters of this fact might actually bring an end to this shear madness. (Another is to remind them that the abbreviation for "short on top, long in back" is shlong.) What I find even more bewildering is that rednecks sport the haircut gays wore twenty years ago while gays have somehow ended up with a style we used to associate with rednecks: the buzz-cut. You walk into any gay bar on a Saturday and it looks like an Army recruiting office. Compared to us, straight guys are starting to look nelly. Stylists call the buzz-cut the "Two by Four" (number two clippers on top, number four on the sides) and it's equally popular with lesbians and straight guys, which means heterosexual women are the only people left on the planet who exhibit creativity with their hair. (Except, of course, yours truly. Over the years, I've experimented with more hairdos and don'ts than Madonna. In fact, to view Marc's Museum of Manes, please visit my website www.MarcAcito.com and cast a vote for your favorite coif by clicking on "Vote for Marc's Hair.") I'm certain that some of you readers secretly long to use your heads as a venue for self-expression. For instance, those of you who do that thing where you mold your hair up into a ridge (aka the "fauxhawk"). Nice try, but to me it just looks like you're a pointy-headed newborn after it's squeezed through the birth canal. And then there are those of you with the "Shove," that hedge along your forehead that makes grown men look like members of the Lollipop Guild. On a recent episode of Queer as Folk, Ben's shove was standing up so straight he must have taken Rogaine and Viagra at the same time. Y'know, I can't help but feel there's a certain internal homophobia underlying this insistence on getting one's hair to quite literally stand up "straight." Personally, I yearn for the days when fey Oscar Wilde types twirled their shoulder-length curls while reciting poetry in crushed velvet knickers. So as a gay role model, once again I'm leading the vanguard by literally letting my hair down. I'm currently enjoying the floppy freedom of an Ashton Kutcher shag. At my age, I figure I might as well have fun with my follicles while they last. Like they say, "Hair today, gone tomorrow." And that, my friends, is The Gospel According to Marc. Marc Acito's hairdos and don'ts can be seen at www.MarcAcito.com. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 13, No.8, June 27, 2003. |